I Put You In My Past [Opal + Potato] //drought plot

There is one thing I have come to learn to accept and deal with, with a grace that shouldn’t come so easily, and that is change. Once you have been through the games, once you have stood in front of all those children, seen their faces flash across a screen, spent years seeing those seem eyes haunt you every night you don’t fear change. In fact I welcome it over three quarters of the time. Change means something new and even if it is a bad change it generally is welcomed enough that it lifts me slightly higher out of the dregs and into something slightly less badly. I’ve been through it enough times, a constant presence in my life that I can sense it, like a second instinct, like a storm right before it hits and sends your life into the spiralling depths of hell. I’ve come to be able to deal with it well enough, with enough grace and elegance that I barely falter in the face of some new problem.

Only this year did my brother lose his life. And once more I was thrown into a disarray of the unknown. That was painful, those few days after his death had been some of the worst, I hadn’t even been able to focus on the games as they were and consequently I had not watched the death of the last remaining tribute from district one. I can’t even remember feeling the slightest inkling of guilt for ignoring them, I was still so down and drowning in the pain of losing yet another sibling to these games that I stopped thinking about anyone else, but myself. And yet, I still don’t feel guilty being unable to even recall the place gained by the girl that died.

Two years had passed since I had last stood in this exact spot. The platform at the district eleven train station was just as packed as last time I had come, jostling bodies everywhere. But this time it all wasn’t for me; for that I was grateful, I could melt into the crowd, slide into the traffic. We were all pushed into the justice building, we were we sorted into lines between each district. There were faces everywhere, from all different districts. But as I moved to the one indicated for those from district one found myself standing beside two other people. I should have known that not many from my own district would seek to help others out, they were all far too selfish to come. Sighing I run a hand through my hair.

We’d all been briefed on what was happening in the district, we had all been set on strict routines and paths, although being of the status I was in I had been given a lot more freedom, almost to help out as I will. Especially having the reputation I did with gardening I had been told to do what I could. I didn’t think I was going to do much, however. From the very first moment I had heard about the troubles the district had been facing my first thought had been of one person only.

Potato.

His name echoed in my mind, it haunted me. I was afraid that I’d come here, race off to his house to find nobody there, to find skeletons and cobwebs and death. I was so scared that he was going to be dead. I couldn’t lose someone else that I cared about.

How was it that after spending one single afternoon his face was something that came to me time after time? How was it his voice and his hands were the two things I remember the most clearly about him. I remember the way he spoke, his words dripping with an accent that made me smile, the way they twisted each word into something new, the way they dragged, but clung to things and gave them shape. It was unique. Just as his love of life and plants and the earth. I remember the way he spoke of plants, the way he smelled of the earth. I remember seeing him on the platform at the train station, as he waved. I waved back, and ten other arms responded, but I know he knew that that was for him and him alone.

I missed him. And I would not be able to live with myself if I walked back to that house and I found nothing, but death.

I paid little attention to the Peacekeeper’s that processed us, I offered my hand when they asked, and they pricked my finger and smeared my blood onto the page. And then they told me to move. And so I did, eyes staring straight ahead. My heart beat seemed to increase tenfold as I approached the doors. Images of what had once been flashing across my eyes. My chest felt way too tight, because surely it couldn’t be that bad, because surely it couldn’t be any worse then what I had seen. That was just foolish thinking.

It was a sight easily relatable to the hell of the arena. There was no life, and I could imagine pools of tar blooming up everywhere. I halted, the bustling crowd shoving me, and forcing me forwards, but my legs would not move. I could see the disaster all around me, the way the sand kicked up and carried as easily in the wind as the children seemed to. Kids leaned on doors pf houses, bones poking through their skin. As my gaze slide over I saw bones, whether they were human or animal I did not know. I saw pain, misery and despair. And that was what kicked my body into action and all at once I was running. My gate riddled by the false leg, but fast and swift all the same.

I ran and I ran and I ran even when it hurt. Dust flew up behind each of my steps.

Potato. He was there. He was alive. He had to be alive.

I run onto their property and vault over the fence and I don’t stop until I near the doors. It’s wide open. And the sight that greets me is worse than anything I could have conjured with my own mind. Because the boy I see in front of me was as close to death that it would have been a gift to him. He’s a sobbing ball of bones and skin, keeled over on the ground, dirt and dust in his hands, on his lap, everywhere. And he’s sobbing and surely there must be tears, but I can’t see a single thing. The rake my his side seems useless and all at once my heart breaks, whatever was left healed and strong since Argonite’s death is shattered into a million pieces. This time I don’t think it is going to heal, but that doesn’t matter, not now, not yet.

Stumbling forwards I only stop when I am a metre away from him. From the boy that looks nothing like the one I left behind two years ago. And when I speak I can’t keep the shake out of my voice, the worry from dripping in and the fear from lacing each word, ”Potato, it’s me. It’s me…”

What else can I say? What else can mend the pain, the despair and fear that seems to cloud the air around us. There’s nothing. I find my knees weak and they slide out from under me. And suddenly I’m in the dirt with him, brown eyes staring at him, unable to look away.

I am no stranger to death. In proclaiming this it can be said that I am no stranger when it comes to witnessing it as much as dealing it out. My hands are stained with blood, palms slick with the crimson substance. My nightmares are often plagued by it, one moment there is nothing then as I look downwards I am left staring at red hands, that hot, sticky substance dripping from my fingers and pooling on the ground at my feet. I’ll watch as it falls and then once the fear as faded I will look upwards and I will be faced with those that I had killed. I was faced with the ones that the blood called for. Yaa, with her mangled body, both hands missing. Drace with those cold eyes, but those same eyes that showed that fear for death all the same. And Akasha, body burnt to a crisp, arm lying on the floor. And Xanthus, my sweet friend stood there with my Dao in his hand. The blade slick with his blood and the others too.

And to end that nightmare he steps forward and he talks to me, in that same way he always had and he smiles and calls me his friend and then he stabs me in the stomach. And I wake up.

I am no stranger to death. I have come to witness my own a thousand times over. It is that nightmare that is by far the worst and it is that nightmare alone that solely plagues me these days. But now as I stare at the remains of the boy before me I know that another face will enter those dreams. His. This is not the face of the boy I once knew. I can remember so clearly the Potato I knew two years ago, that face, that still had those chubby edges, but beneath those small curves you could see the way it began to fade away and from that one look you knew that he was going to be a handsome young man. Those eyes that seemed to spring to life as I mentioned plants, the ramble that sprung forth as he talked about plants. The way he smelled of the earth – of the place I wanted to call home.

That was not the boy that was bowed, bent and broken before me. This boy was the thing of nightmares, this boy was the one I would have never even thought of conjuring up. Because he wasn’t supposed to be like this, he was never supposed to turn out like this, this sweet, innocent, pure boy. This boy that had not even known what the Hunger games were, the boy that had thought my visit was simply for a garden competition, the one that didn’t know me as a killer and murderer, but rather as the girl that was obsessed with the dirt and sand as much as he was. Where was he? My eyes were wide, and I knew my entire body was trembling; I had no clue what to think or do about all of this. I wanted to get up and walk away from this disaster.

What the fuck had I done to deserve this? What the fuck had I done to deserve all of this shit? I don’t deserve this. He does not deserve this. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fucking fair. Why was it like this? Why was I suffering? Why was he suffering? Tears spring to my eyes and I let out a deep shuddering breath, desperately trying to grab the reigns of the oncoming storm that welled up within me. Get your shit together, Opal. Fuck, Potato is dying, he needs your help, he doesn’t need you crying. I clap my hands to my face and wipe my eyes, pull yourself together. I take a few more deep breathes, using them as a way to get a grip on myself and pull my emotions together. Not like in the games, of course, though my skill at keeping my emotions in check had been horrible, there was really no reason as to why it would work now, except it did now. And after a few moments I was feeling more in control.

I gather my feet beneath me once more and stand up. It seems as though it is shaky at first and as though I am going to fall once more, but I remain still, my stance steadying as the seconds tick by. The wind howls around us and the dust roars in giant waves, it is similar to the oceans in district four, except with the dust it is painful and filthy, and a lot less remarkable. Instead it only just reminds me of the pain and suffering of the land. Underneath my feet I can feel it, I can sense the pain and suffering and it makes my entire body ache.

"Yer too late, Princess, they're all dead," and with those few worlds all the control I had gathered shatters. And I find myself in the dirt once more, hands pressed to the soil, hands feeling the heartbeat of the land as it dies. Heart feeling the ache and the pain that Potato must be suffering. It hits me like a storm and I’m caught up in the chaos of all this pain and misery and oh dear ripred why. Why?

This time I don’t bother stopping the tears, this time I can’t stop the tremble that controls my hands and body.

”Oh ripred, oh ripred no.” I raise a hand and cover my mouth. And I look up at him, shaking my head in disbelief, because it can’t be this bad. It can’t. No, not Potato, not this family, no. I don’t believe it, I can’t. And I want to back away, maybe if I leave, maybe if I go away it’ll all be a lie. Am I in another nightmare? It has to be. Then I am reaching forwards. I grasp his shoulders – those thin, bony shoulders and my heart tears just to feel it – and I draw him closer to me and then I grab his face and make him look up at me.

”Potato, Potato look at me.” I say, pushing myself to speak steadily, ”get up, please get up. Don’t you dare give up on me. Don’t you fucking dare.” I can’t lose him to.

I pull him forwards and I wrap my arms around him.

”Please. Don’t die.”